#OCCUPYWALLSTREET campaign - September 17

[Jeff]

Just created this video, based on the Alistair Huwlett song:

[Gouda]

Billionaires Avoid Reporting Cash Gains to IRS

By Jesse Drucker - Nov 21, 2011

(Bloomberg) -

(...)

McCombs’s fight with the IRS illustrates an overlooked facet in the debate over tax rates paid by the nation’s wealthiest. Billionaires -- from McCombs to Philip Anschutz to Ronald S. Lauder -- who derive the bulk of their wealth from stock appreciation are using strategies that reap hundreds of millions of dollars from those valuable shares in ways the IRS often doesn’t classify as taxable income, securities filings and tax court records show.

(...)

Tip of Iceberg

The rate at which the 400 U.S. taxpayers with the highest adjusted gross income actually paid federal income taxes --their so-called effective tax rate -- fell to about 18 percent in 2008 from almost 30 percent in 1995, IRS data show. That’s the tip of the iceberg, since much of their wealth never converts into income on a tax return, McCaffery said.

[undead]

Video remix: UC Davis pepper spray incident viewed from 4 different perspectives

I'm glad this happened before they managed to equip police with all the airgun-fired fentanyl patches, antidepressant gas, and tesla death rays that are in development. I read here a while ago that there were reports of LRAD in Oakland or New York, I think. Is it still there? I am assuming that we would be hearing about it if they used it, but maybe I shouldn't. Has anyone heard anything?

[undead]

This is how they disappear people in the United States. No trial, no hearing, just indefinite detention according to the discretion of psychiatrists. We will be seeing more of this:

Man atop statue at Occupy Wall Street protest escorted to psychiatric ward

Postmedia News · Oct. 24, 2011 | Last Updated: Oct. 24, 2011 3:05 AM ET

A Canadian man is in a New York hospital after police and hostage-negotiation officers removed the Occupy Wall Street protester from a massive sculpture where he was perched about 10 metres from the ground. Dylan Spoelstra, 24, of Toronto, was handcuffed and escorted to the psychiatric facility Saturday after he spent hours on the Lower Manhattan red sculpture known as "Joie de Vivre" in Zucotti Park, New York police officer James Duffy told Postmedia News Sunday. "This was more a case of an emotionally disturbed person so we routinely handcuff people and escort them to hospital," he said. Mr. Spoelstra is to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, an employee at Bellevue Hospital said. Local reports say Mr. Spoelstra insisted he wouldn't come down from the 21-metre sculpture unless he spoke to the city's mayor.

http://www.nationalpost.com/atop+statue ... story.html

Notice the insidious framing on this next one. How was this man "emotionally disturbed"? It is made to sound as if he randomly attacked an EMT. We later find out that he "attacked" an EMT who was forcing him into an ambulance. And he will certainly be treated as mentally ill since he injured an EMT, justifying his involuntary commitment after the fact. What was he doing in the first place to warrant being kidnapped by EMTs?

EMT Hospitalized After Scuffle With Occupy Wall Street Protester

By Sonja Sharp

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

DOWNTOWN — A scuffle with a protester at Occupy Wall Street's Lower Manhattan encampment landed an EMT in hospital with a possible broken leg early Thursday morning, police said.

Protester Joshua Ehrenberg, 20, of Rochester, was arrested on felony assault charges after tussling with the medic, who had responded to reports of an emotionally disturbed person at Zuccotti Park at 12:30 a.m., police said.

Ehrenberg allegedly fought off emergency workers who were attempting to put him in an ambulance, when he pushed the EMT into a ladder, injuring his ankle.

Fire officials reported that the victim was transported to Bellevue Hospital and treated for a broken leg.

Ehrenberg was also taken to Bellevue, where he was being held for psychiatric evaluation, police said.

Read more: http://gamma.dnainfo.com/20111110/downt ... z1eR2vqOzm

[undead]

Interesting...

THE MAN WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS - A few weeks ago, we quoted a 20-year-old from Rochester, N.Y., Josh Ehrenberg, who'd spent two weeks in Zuccotti Park before heading down to join Occupy DC. We asked him about a transaction tax. "I think that's a great idea. I like that tax a lot," he said while serving oatmeal to morning protesters. "I don't know too much about it, and I'm not going to claim to understand it to a degree I don't, but that is in [the same] vein with a lot of the things that I want." Apparently, he has since returned to Zuccotti. He's now facing a felony assault charge. Gothamist: "Joshua Ehrenberg, 20, was arrested by police and charged with assault after an emergency medical technician was injured while police officers and protesters clashed over Ehrenberg, who has been engaged in a fight with his girlfriend. According to Chris Reider, a member of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration’s internal security team, they tried to escort Ehrenberg out of the park after the initial fight with the girlfriend; someone called police about a disturbed person, who offered Ehrenberg the choice of being arrested or being taken for a psych evaluation. A small group of Ehrenberg's friends then circled him, locking arms, to keep the officers from reaching him. According to the FDNY, there was then a scuffle to subdue him which led to Ehrenberg shoving the EMT worker into a ladder and injuring his ankle and knee. But Reider says things went down a bit differently: as the officers and three EMT workers tried to collect Ehrenberg, one medical worker stumbled over a barricade." Our guess: The Man saw that he was speaking out in the pages of HuffPost, and set him up. [Gothamist]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb ... 89188.html

[semper occultus]

‘It’s a Food Product, Essentially’: Fox News Starts Spinning Pepper Spray Cops

gawker.com

Tonight, Fox News hosts Bill O'Reilly and Megyn Kelly got to talking about a UC Davis police officer's appalling use of pepper spray on nonviolent protesters over the weekend. Guess what direction the conversation took!
If you guessed "needlessly deferential to authority and dismissive to the suffering of protesters," you guessed correctly!

"I don't think we have the right to Monday-morning quarterback the police," O'Reilly says, "particularly at a place like UC Davis, which is a fairly liberal campus." God forbid! We'd never want to question Lt. John Pike's decision to generously and indifferently dust peacefully sitting protesters with pepper spray from only a few feet away. Especially given that Davis is, you know, a liberal campus! And, gosh, even if we were going to Monday-morning quarterback the police, shouldn't we remember, as Megyn Kelly tells O'Reilly, that pepper spray is "a food product, essentially"?

Now, look, Kelly and O'Reilly aren't saying the cops did the right thing! God, no! "I agree [the tape] looks bad," Kelly says. It's just that the protesters were sitting in a place where they weren't allowed to sit, so it's kind of their own fault! And in any event what right do we have to judge a cop for spraying a simple food product on the faces of a bunch of liberal college kids doing something criminal? You know? Maybe he was just trying to feed them?

....and from the comments.....

yourfriendandmine Mon 21 Nov 2011 10:18 PM

Megyn Kelly on fire hoses: "It’s a sports beverage, essentially!"
Megyn Kelly on police dogs: "It’s a family pet, essentially!"
Megyn Kelly on tasers: "It’s static cling, essentially!"
Megyn Kelly on rubber bullets: "It’s a pencil eraser, essentially!"
Megyn Kelly on hand grenades: "It’s a Fourth of July firework, essentially! God bless America."

CountFosco @yourfriendandmine
Megyn Kelly on beanbag rounds: "It's a game of cornhole, essentially!"

AMessageToRudy @yourfriendandmine
Megyn Kelly on brains; "It's skull space-filler, essentially."

yourfriendandmine @CountFosco
Megyn Kelly on nightsticks: "It's an olive branch, essentially!"

QueenOfTarts @yourfriendandmine
Excellent meme material..make it happen!

[redacted] @yourfriendandmine
Megyn Kelly on waterboarding: "It's a water park ride essentially!"

BeefFajitas @yourfriendandmine
Megyn Kelly on Auschwitz: "It was a three star hotel, essentially."

SidAndFinancy @yourfriendandmine
Megyn Kelly on fingernail extraction: "It's a mani-pedi, essentially!"

Sauceboy @yourfriendandmine
Megyn Kelly on genital mutilation: "It's a Brazilian wax, essentially!"

PJamma @yourfriendandmine
Megan Kelly on her haircut: "It's a style, essentially!"

yourfriendandmine @[redacted]
Megyn Kelly on vet beatings: "It's greeting liberators, essentially!"

obfuscator2 @[redacted]
I was going to say:
Megyn Kelly on waterboarding: "It's a Neti Pot, essentially!"

jayareff @yourfriendandmine
Megyn Kelly on being laid off when your wife is pregnant: "It's European style family leave, essentially."

Rozelle’s Bagman @yourfriendandmine
Megyn Kelly on zip-tie handcuffs: "It's a Livestrong bracelet, essentially."

Munchma Quchi @yourfriendandmine
Megyn Kelly on Jerry Sandusky: "He was having sex, essentially".

treefingersss @yourfriendandmine
Megyn Kelly on HIV: "It's a common cold, essentially!"

BeefFajitas @yourfriendandmine
Megyn Kelly on the 9/11 hijackings: "They were like that Steve Miller Band Jet Airliner song, essentially."

AUsername @yourfriendandmine

Megyn Kelly on tear gas: "It's like a sad story, essentially!"
Megyn Kelly on flashbangs: "It's like a surprise party, essentially!"
Megyn Kelly on sleep deprivation: "It's like a cup o' Joe, essentially!"
Megyn Kelly on stress positions: "It's like yoga, essentially!"
Megyn Kelly on mock executions: "It's like make-believe, essentially!"

LittleMisterMoffatt @yourfriendandmine
Megyn Kelly on the rack: "It's a chiropractor, essentially!"

MoronicInferno @yourfriendandmine

Megyn Kelly on mustard gas: "It's a hot dog condiment, essentially!"
Megyn Kelly on nuclear weapons: "It's a microwave dinner, essentially!"
Megyn Kelly on sound weapons: "It's a boom box, essentially!"
Megyn Kelly on Molotov cocktails: "It's a flirtini, essentially!"

aeschylus.daniel @yourfriendandmine
megyn kelly on guantanamo: "ít's a carribean vacation, essentially"

BerniceNymph @yourfriendandmine
Megyn Kelly on arsenic: "It's a vitamin, essentially!"
Megyn Kelly on handguns: "It's a slingshot, essentially!"

Komeister @yourfriendandmine Megyn Kelly on Hitler: "Basically a guy with neat hair and a cute moustache"

[American Dream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/22/ ... ying-cops/
NOVEMBER 22, 2011

Which Side Are You On?

Obama’s Pepper Spraying Cops

by DAVE LINDORFF


The growing number of video clips and photos showing police in Darth Vader-like riot gear assaulting peaceful demonstrators with everything from tear gas and mace to truncheons, point-blank shots with beanbags and rubber bullets, and of course the ubiquitous fist and club, have made a bad joke out of claims that America is either the land of the free or the home of the brave.

Scott Olson, a veteran of America’s Iraq War, suffered a severe brain injury that nearly killed him, and left him with difficulty speaking, thanks to a shot to his head by an attacking police officer in Oakland who was firing teargas canisters from a gun-like weapon. Olsen is lucky to be alive and will hopefully recover over time. A comrade, veteran Kayvan Sabehgi, who was retreating from advancing police that same night with his hands tucked in his pockets, can be seen being chased and so brutally beaten by another attacking thug cop that he had to be hospitalized for treatment of a lacerated spleen, although the cops left him writing in agony in a cell for hours before sending him to the hospital.

Old women, pregnant mothers-to-be, and even children have been hit with pepper spray, teargassed and terrorized by police goons in New York, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Dallas, Chicago, Boston and elsewhere in what is almost certainly a coordinated attack on the Occupy Movement being run out of Washington.

Americans have been watching these scenes of cops assaulting peaceful demonstrators in shock. They are used to seeing this kind of thing going on in Latin America or the Middle East or Asia, and our own government would always make noises of protest. Now it’s happening here at home.

President Obama, meanwhile, has remained shamelessly silent about this police-state behavior by the nation’s local police forces, all of them armed and armored with the aid of Federal Homeland Security grants, and working on the basis of “intelligence” collected by federally-funded Fusion Centers” and federally- run Joint Terrorism Task Forces.

This is the moment that Obama, who faces an election in less than a year, has to demonstrate whether he is the president of the banks that have so lavishly funded his first campaign, that continue to pour money into his current re-election campaign, and that are urging this crackdown on protests, or the people — especially the young people — who worked so hard to put him into office in the first place.

The thuggish attacks on the peaceful protesters of the Occupy Movement are even more brutal than were many of the attacks on the Civil Rights Movement marchers of the 1950s and ’60s. The only thing lacking right now from those dark days are the murders and the dogs, but no doubt we’ll be seeing those thing’s next, as the movement demanding economic justice for the 99% and punishment for the 1% builds momentum.

Back in the 1950s, an earlier president, former Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhour, witnessing the atrocities of local police in Arkansas and other jurisdictions, did the right thing. He ordered out the National Guard to defend the civil rights of young black people who wanted to be able to attend public schools and colleges, and those week-end soldiers defended the people and the Constitution and kept the cops and their dogs at bay.

Now President Obama must do the same thing. Whether or not his Department of Homeland Security and his Justice Department have been orchestrating the attacks on demonstrators in the Occupy Movement, Obama must now order out the Guard and instruct them to defend the protesters and the Constitution. It would be a welcome new assignment for the Guard, which for the past decade has been wrongly shipped out of the country to help wage imperialist wars on Iraqis and Afghans.

If he does this, he instantly wins back the army of young people who once worked so tirelessly for his historic election in 2008. If he doesn’t do it, and allows the brutality and the thuggishness to continue to escalate, his reelection hopes are toast, and deservedly so.

The Obama presidency has been one of the greatest disasters for progressives in modern history, as a man who ran for office promising change and a new respect for the Constitution, almost immediately picked up where his predecessor had left off, escalating the country’s illegal wars, enlarging the share of the nation’s wealth going to the Pentagon and to the secret intelligence services, shoveling money to the biggest banks, endorsing the torture abuses at Guantanamo and at the many CIA black-sites around the world, authorizing the summary execution of American citizens abroad, and ignoring the looming catastrophe of global climate change.

It took some time, but out of this wreckage and betrayal, a movement has arisen, led by young people — many of them the very young people who worked so tirelessly for Obama. Now they are boldly demanding a government that works on behalf of the majority, not of the rich and powerful.

For their efforts, they are being assaulted by a police force that has been turned, over the last decade of a fraudulent, trumped-up “War” on Terror, into a kind of American Gestapo, that “polices” communities with assault weapons, breaks into homes wearing masks, beats and gasses people without even bothering to arrest them, kills unarmed citizens with impunity, and considers criticism of its actions tantamount to a crime in itself, meriting assault and/or arrest.

Obama has overseen and even been the author of much of this disaster, but he still has a choice at this point: Either put an immediate stop to this outrage, by inserting the National Guard between these thugs in blue or black, and the people, and start listening and responding to the demands of the Occupy Movement, or go down to defeat next November as the man who buried American democracy and freedom.



DAVE LINDORFF is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new award-winning independent online alternative newspaper. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press.

[justdrew]

Maybe Pepper Spray is a vegetable?

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/22/fox-news-host-megyn-kelly-calls-pepper-spray-a-food-product/

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/22/pregnant-seattle-protester-miscarries-after-being-kicked-pepper-sprayed/

urgent messaging problem needs fixed... Not sure how to reach these people. Maybe a few thousand people on a phone bank calling everyone in the country to talk... As well as a well published in-bound number for people to call and talk with someone if they have questions.

Poll: 56 percent in U.S. ambivalent towards ‘Occupy Wall Street’

The majority of Americans are ambivalent towards the ongoing “Occupy Wall Street” protests and are also uncertain about their goals, according to a Gallup poll released on Monday.

Fifty-six percent of those surveyed said they neither support nor oppose the two-month-old movement and 59 percent said they didn’t know enough to form an opinion about its goals.

As corporations enjoyed near record profits and Americans faced staggering unemployment, the protesters pledged to occupy Wall Street in lower Manhattanin until something was done about the influence of the wealthy on American politics. The protest slowly spread to other cities across the United States.

Supporters of the goals of “Occupy Wall Street” outnumbered its opponents, according to the survey.

Twenty-five percent of Americans approved of the goals of the movement, up three points from October, and 16 percent disapproved. Democrats were significantly more likely than Republicans to approve of its goals, but a large portion of Democrats had no opinion.

But when it came to the actual demonstrations themselves, the amount of people disagreeing with how the protests were being conducted jumped from 20 percent in October to 31 percent in November.

The Gallup poll was conducted November 19-20 and surveyed 996 adults.

support for is still larger than opposition to OWS, which is impressive, but the whole point here is changing minds isn't it? Need to step that up somehow (although it's probably the hardest thing in the world to do)
http://www.gallup.com/poll/150896/Support-Occupy-Unchanged-Criticize-Approach.aspx

[American Dream]

[undead]

[undead]

[undead]

[undead]

[2012 Countdown]

Drew, Those numbers are excellent. What are the stats on revolutionary colonists-to-loyalists? Fuck the backwash. Let those with ears to hear and eyes to see join.
---
#OWS: Movement Surges 10% Online Since Zuccotti Eviction
Micah L. Sifry | November 22, 2011 - 1:17pm

A week ago, early Tuesday morning November 15th, New York City police forcibly evicted the Occupy Wall Street protest encampment at Zuccotti Park. Since then, there's been an interesting shift in how some key observers in the mainstream media talk about the movement. For example, David Carr, an influential media columnist for the New York Times, wrote yesterday as if the Occupy movement had essentially ended, with no recognition that there are still many other cities and campuses with physical occupations underway. "A tipping point is at hand," he intoned about the movement, "now that it is not gathered around campfires." He added, darkly, "When the spectacle disappears reporters often fold up their tents as well."

Not to pick on Carr, whose column and work I often enjoy, but since when did reporters treat political movements like passing fads? The Times, like many other newspapers, has given plenty of coverage to the Tea Party movement--even when the available data suggested that the Tea Party had nowhere as big a following on the ground as its media presence and polling numbers suggested.

Interestingly enough, since last Tuesday's eviction in NYC, support for the overall Occupy Wall Street movement has risen significantly online. Below you can see the tracking numbers for total "likes" of Occupy-related groups on Facebook, as tallied by Shane Castlen on his CollectiveDisorder.com site.



full-
http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/ows ... i-eviction

============================================

MIC CHECK!!! (Occupy mic checks Obama)



Obama Gets Mic Checked, Tells Protesters: ‘You’re The Reason I Ran For Office’ | Protesters aligned with Occupy Wall Street interrupted President Obama at a speech in New Hampshire this afternoon, and Obama responded by telling the demonstrators that they are the reason he wanted to get into public service. A few minutes into his speech at the high school, a protester shouted “mic check,” and others joined in with shouts. The crowd quickly drowned the protesters out with chants of “Obama,” but a few minutes later, Obama said “families like yours, young people like the ones here today — including the ones who were just chanting at me — you’re the reason that I ran for office in the first place.”

http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/1 ... or-office/

====
Video #2 - Actually I think RP handles it well...

Ron Paul gets ‘mic checked’ by New Hampshire protesters
Texas Rep. Ron Paul (R) received a “mic check” from protesters affiliated with the “Occupy Wall Street” movement at town hall event in Keene, New Hampshire on Monday.

“We are the 99 percent,” they shouted. “We will be heard. There are criminals on Wall Street who walk free. There are protesters in jail. There is something wrong with this system. We are the 99 percent. We will be heard.”

“Do you feel better?” Paul responded, chuckling.

“If you listen very carefully, I’m very much involved with the 99 [percent],” the presidential candidate continued. “I’ve been condemning that 1 percent because they’ve been ripping us off. So, we need to sort that out. But the people on Wall Street got the bailouts and you guys got stuck with the bills and I think that’s where the problem is.


http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/21/r ... rotesters/

[Julia W]

Pregnant Seattle Protester Says She Miscarried After Being Kicked And Pepper Sprayed By Police
One of the ugliest pictures that has come out of the Occupy protests is one of an 84 year old woman getting pepper sprayed during a police crack down in Seattle.

We ran the picture at Business Insider and reported that the woman was in the hospital along, with another pepper spray victim, a 19 year-old pregnant woman.

Today we're hearing that the pregnant woman has miscarried — and she believes it was a result of the pepper spray she was attacked with, along with two police hits to her stomach.

Her name is Jennifer Fox, and she was three months pregnant. Here's part of her story from Seattle's The Stranger:

"I was standing in the middle of the crowd when the police started moving in," she says. "I was screaming, 'I am pregnant, I am pregnant. Let me through. I am trying to get out.'" At that point, Fox continues, a Seattle police officer lifted his foot and it hit her in the stomach, and another officer pushed his bicycle into the crowd, again hitting Fox in the stomach. "Right before I turned, both cops lifted their pepper spray and sprayed me. My eyes puffed up and my eyes swelled shut," she says.
Fox went to the hospital after the attack, but nothing seemed wrong with the baby then. A few days later, though, she started experiencing painful cramps. She went back to the hospital and was told that the baby's heartbeat could not be heard.

The Seattle Police department did not respond to a request for comment, and this has not been confirmed with Fox's medical records. We'll give you more when we get it. For now, the video of Fox's reaction to her attack is below.


http://www.businessinsider.com/pregnant ... 1#comments